Thriller
Mediterranean Gothic: The Sleepwalkers, by Scarlett Thomas, reviewed
Thomas tells her tale of a hellish honeymoon on a Greek island with the cunning of an Aegean sorceress, keeping her readers pleasurably unsettled and alert
The last battle: The Future, by Naomi Alderman, reviewed
Sinister preparations for the apocalypse by a few Silicon Valley billionaires must be thwarted in this part-thriller, part-Big Tech critique, part-meditation on doomsday
Only goodwill will get you through this reboot: Paramount+’s Frasier reviewed
Remember the groans of dismay, possibly including your own, which greeted John Cleese’s announcement in February that he was reviving…
The makers of Fauda have another hit on their hands: Sky Atlantic's Munich Games reviewed
You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…
Well-meaning thriller with moments of implausibility: BBC1's Crossfire reviewed
Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together…
The invisible man: The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger, reviewed
Not all Germans were swayed by Hitler, but the majority were. Karl Braun, the fugitive Nazi doctor at the heart…
A very classy thriller indeed: C4's The Undeclared War reviewed
The Undeclared War has many of the traditional signifiers of a classy thriller: the assiduous letter-by-letter captioning of every location;…
Dangerous liaisons: Bad Eminence, by James Greer, reviewed
Vanessa Salomon is an internationally successful translator. Clever, beautiful, privileged – ‘born in a trilingual household: French, English and money’…
Shades of Tony Soprano: BBC1's The Responder reviewed
Older readers may remember a time when people signalled their cultural superiority with the weird boast that they didn’t watch…
Colson Whitehead celebrates old Harlem in a hardboiled thriller that’s also a morality tale
For modern America, Harlem is a once maligned, now much vaunted literary totem, which continues to occupy a gargantuan place…
The best Cold War thriller I've seen that I fully understand: The Courier reviewed
The Courier is a Cold War spy thriller and the prospect of a Cold War spy thriller always makes my…
Much smarter than your average podcast: Passenger List reviewed
Passenger List opens with a carefully structured ripple of breaking news bulletins: a mysterious catastrophe, an unconvincing official explanation, the…
On the track of a mysterious recluse: Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall, reviewed
This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp…
Superb but depraved: BBC1’s The Serpent reviewed
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
An extraordinary debut: Make Up reviewed
Make Up is the first full-length film from writer–director Claire Oakley, set in an out-of-season holiday park on the Cornish…
Classic tangled thriller: Sky's Gangs of London reviewed
There were plenty of TV shows around this week designed to cheer us up. Sky Atlantic’s Gangs of London, however,…
Sharp family saga with a thriller uneasily attached: ITV’s Flesh and Blood reviewed
As in many thrillers, the characters on display in Flesh and Blood (ITV, Monday to Thursday) often seemed locked in…
Fabulous and enthralling: Parasite reviewed
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won the Bafta for best foreign film and is up for six Oscars and it is an…
The best Terminator film since the first: Terminator Six reviewed
The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…
Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed
BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long…
Not like any serial-killer thriller you’ve seen before: Beast reviewed
When I first read that Beast is a serial-killer thriller my heart sank like a stone — yet more women…
My knuckles went pure white and have yet to return to full colour: Custody reviewed
Custody is both social realism and a thriller and it’s terrific. It is smart, beautifully acted, never crass about the…